Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale: Team Valor active early with two high-profile purchases

Barry Irwin, the managing partner of the Team Valor racing partnership, went deep on two yearlings early on in the first session of the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Selected Yearling Sale on Monday night, spending $875,000 on a Medaglia d’Oro colt and $600,000 on an Indian Charlie filly, the second- and third-highest prices at the session at the halfway mark.

The Medaglia d’Oro colt is out of the A.P. Indy mare Crystal Current, a stakes winner who is a full sister to Grade 1 winner and promising young Coolmore stallion Majestic Warrior, the sire of Kentucky Oaks and CCA Oaks winner Princess of Sylmar. It is the family of Grade 1 winners Dream Supreme and Spinning Round.

Irwin, in an interview after signing the ticket, said the yearling was “kind of a brute for a Medaglia d’Oro,” whom Irwin bought as a stallion prospect for the Stonewall Farm operation of Richard and Audrey Haisfield.

“He looks fast,” said Irwin about the yearling. “Very few Medaglia d’Oro’s don’t look like they can run long, so when you combine the way he looks with his pedigree, the horses that could run long in there, he was a real standout.”

The $600,000 Indian Charlie filly is out of Alpine Garden, a Canadian Grade 3 winner by Lemon Drop Kid. The yearling did not have an especially deep or productive pedigree, but Irwin said that she had “the best walk in the catalog.”

“She just looked awesome,” Irwin said. “She had a lot of depth.”

Both horses will race for the Team Valor racing partnership, which had its greatest success with Animal Kingdom, winner of the 2011 Kentucky Derby and 2013 Dubai World Cup. Animal Kingdom was retired earlier this year to begin stud duty at Arrowfield Stud in Australia. He will stand the Northern hemisphere breeding season at Jonabell Farm, a division of the international racing and breeding operation Darley, which acquired a 29 percent interest in the horse’s breeding rights in April of this year.